Being holier than thou, and more

Good week for:

Being holier than thou, after a small Brazilian farming town announced plans to erect a statue of a 128-foot Jesus, 4 feet taller than the country’s famous Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.

Eating meat, after two sushi bar owners in Tokyo paid $100,000 for a single, 282-pound bluefin tuna—about $370 a pound. The ocean’s population of bluefin tuna, which is prized by sushi lovers, has declined dramatically, leading to skyrocketing prices.

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Miracles, after a supposedly paraplegic Mexican woman who’d been begging for change from her wheelchair jumped up and ran down the street when a security guard saw her trying to augment her income by breaking into a store.

Bad week for:

Memoirs, with the news that yet another author’s incredible life story was a hoax. Herman Rosenblat now admits he made up Angel at the Fence, which describes how he fell in love with and later married a girl who threw him apples over a concentration camp’s barbed-wire fence. “I wanted to bring happiness to people,” Rosenblat explained.

Sitting down without looking, after a man boarding a ski lift at Colorado’s ritzy Vail resort fell through a faulty seat, got his skis caught in the mechanism, and dangled upside down, with his pants pulled down to his knees, for up to 15 minutes.

Visitors to the Chessington, U.K., zoo, after keepers fed the gorillas a holiday treat of Brussels sprouts. “Unfortunately, an embarrassing side effect is that it can cause bouts of flatulence,” said keeper Michael Rozzi. “I don’t think any of us were prepared for a smell that strong.”